Joshua Cohen, co-editor of Boston Review, director of the Program on Global Justice, and Stanford professor of political science, law, and philosophy, discusses his editorship and how he has helped the magazine increase its visibility and impact.

“My idea was to have a political magazine that would be more devoted to argument and reasoning than the screechiness that I thought was characteristic of most political magazines. There was a need for a left-center-of-gravity magazine of ideas that would be different from other publications with a similar broad political outlook. I didn’t want everything that appeared in the magazine to be from the same point of view, but rather to provoke debate in a way that emphasized low rhetoric and avoided personalizing issues and personalizing attacks on people. Preserving that editorial style required a lot of effort. There are plenty of other places where you can get dramatic rhetoric. We are guided by a philosophical idea of a public reason shared by citizens, and we show respect to our readers by exploring the complexity of issues. We provide the serious content for the emerging electronic public sphere.”